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Boulder company sues WTO, seeking to reinstate food labels of origin

A Boulder company that delivers groceries has sued the World Trade Organization, seeking to overturn a ruling it says undermined a law requiring meat products to be labeled with their country of origin.

Melonhead LLC, operator of Mile High Organics, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Denver on Sept. 1 — with fellow plaintiffs Made in the USA Foundation and United Stockgrowers of America — against the WTO, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

The suit asks the court to reverse a WTO decision in June finding that the Country of Origin Labeling Act, also known as COOL, "has a detrimental impact on imported livestock."

The act was passed in 2002, but Canada and Mexico later filed a complaint with the WTO alleging that it illegally discriminated against their beef.

The WTO Appellate Body ruled June 29 that COOL is a barrier to trade and "accords less favorable treatment to imported livestock than to domestic livestock." The ruling affirmed the right to adopt country-of-origin labels but forces the U.S. to change how it operates the program, according to news reports. Some observers said they feared it would make it impossible to administer country-of-origin labeling.

In the Denver lawsuit, Melonhead and the other plaintiffs claim COOL is not a barrier to trade.

"It was passed to give consumers information about where agricultural products come from," they said.

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There could be circumstances in which consumers might not want to buy raspberries from a country because of a bacterial problem, or refuse to buy beef from a different country because of a mad-cow outbreak there, they said.

Mike Schultz, a spokesman for the stockgrowers group, said the suit was filed to preserve the right of all Americans "to know the origins of their food."

He added: "As U.S. citizens, we never gave up our right to continue governing ourselves under our U.S. Constitution, and we certainly didn't grant the World Trade Organization authority to undermine our domestic laws."

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